


i retch, i shake (i cry until i break)

by CCs_World



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Comforting Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crowley has nightmares, Crowley's Fall (Good Omens), Dissociation, Dreams and Nightmares, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt Crowley (Good Omens), Other, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Tags Are Fun, Trauma, crowley has Trauma™ and aziraphale kisses it better metaphorically
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-27
Updated: 2019-09-27
Packaged: 2020-10-29 12:29:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20796650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CCs_World/pseuds/CCs_World
Summary: It’s ever-present, the feeling of burning, the feeling of rejection, that feeling of a ragged hole where a piece of you used to be. Crowley feels it every day, every step he takes, every breath, every word. Even in his sleep he feels it.





	i retch, i shake (i cry until i break)

**Author's Note:**

> so this fic is based incredibly heavily on icarus by jason webley which i highly recommend listening to because it is Very Good. In fact listen to all of jason webley's music. But especially icarus.

It’s ever-present, the feeling of burning, the feeling of rejection, that feeling of a ragged hole where a piece of you used to be. Crowley feels it every day, every step he takes, every breath, every word. Even in his sleep he feels it. Sometimes he is falling; endless, horrid falling, the stink of sulfur and singed feathers in his nostrils as he topples from the firmament of Heaven and straight into the fiery pit constructed just for rejects like him. In those dreams he screams, he claws at his burning wings, he cries and begs for mercy, for forgiveness, for love, even as the love is torn straight from his very being and he is cast, forever, into darkness.

In some dreams, there is no pain, there is no torture, there is no burning, there is no falling. There is only the empty feeling of something missing, right beside his too-human heart, dark and hollow and seemingly endless. It doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t feel like anything. More accurately, it feels like nothing.  _ Nothing, _ where something should be. Everything around him is white and glowing, pristine and featureless, like Heaven before it went corporate. It’s pearlescent and perfect, shining, beautiful. Everything glitters slightly, like roughened quartz or light refracted through a cut diamond. It’s just how he remembers it.

Voices whisper in his ears in these dreams, words that are urgent, words that are friendly, words that are encouraging, words that are loving. In these dreams he strains to hear what they say, able to pick out individual voices but still unable to parse what they’re saying. He needs to hear what they’re saying. What are they saying? It’s so important. It’s so terribly important. He tries, he pushes, he yells at the whispers to speak up, speak  _ up, _ tell me what you want! but there is nothing, and he wakes with that horrible lonely feeling still aching just beside his heart.

No matter what dream he wakes from, his immediate reaction is the same: he sits bolt upright, hugs his knees to his chest, and cries. He sobs like he’s about to be sick, sobs like he’s dying, sobs like his world is coming to an end and he’s at the center of the explosion. The weeping can last for minutes or hours, but it always ends with him feeling drained, emptier than before, hollowed and carved out rough like a child’s Jack-O-Lantern.

Sometimes, if the dream is incredibly intense, a replication of the Fall, perhaps, seared into his memory and scorching his very essence with its trauma, he will lay sick and feverish beneath his sheets, tossing, turning, groaning in the heat and agony. For weeks, sometimes, he will remain there, in a sort of half-awake, half-dreaming haze of agony and fiery memory, half-formed pleas for release escaping his chapped and bitten lips.

Occasionally, the dreams will leave him in a State: disoriented, dizzy, detached. Not quite there. Once the weeping subsides he will, quite often, sit or lay on his bed and stare into the nothingness beyond nothing. One time, he was there for a month. One time, he was there for a century. When Aziraphale asked where he had been, he’d simply said, “Took a nap.” It had started as a nap. It had ended as a hazy, apathetic lazing in a dissociative state, floating down a stream of muffled pain and sorrow. He’d finally come back to himself covered in dust, his voice cracked and rusty, his hair grown long, his legs unused to standing. It took him a while to get back on his feet, literally and figuratively.

He didn’t sleep for a long time after that. The next time he slept, the words “you go too fast for me” echoed in the backdrops of his dreams.

Now, however.

Now is different.

Now, he is not in bed alone. Instead, Aziraphale is beside him, sitting up, back against the headboard, well-loved copy of  _ Dorian Grey _ in his manicured hands. “You know I don’t sleep, Crowley,” he’d said gently when Crowley had asked him to come to bed one tentative night a few months prior. After a shared bottle of wine, the taste then shared again between pressed lips which was another new  _ now, _ just beginning to take flight one week after the Apocawasn’t. It seemed so fast and Crowley had felt so dreadful asking if the angel would accompany him to bed but now, with the comforting weight balancing the mattress in a way it never had been before, Crowley feels silly for having worried at all.

Now, when he sleeps, he is not alone. Now, when he dreams, he has someone standing watch over him. Now, when he sits up with a shout of fear and scrambles for something to clutch onto, he has a warm hand to hold while he cries. Now, when he is tensed with terror and pain and sorrow, he has a voice gently whispering in his ear, soothing him, telling him to relax, relax, you’ll be okay, I’m here now. Now, when he is sick and feverish and groaning, he has someone to bathe the sweat from his forehead and press cold glasses of water into his taut, flexing fingers. Now, when he is dragged into a haze of mindlessness, he has someone to comb fingers through his hair and read sonnets to him until he wakes.

In the now, in the here and hereafter, though Crowley is broken and breaking, he has someone to gather up his pieces, put him back together, and tell him that his cracks make him all the more lovely and loveable.

And Crowley, to his surprise, finds that he doesn’t mind being called  _ lovely _ all that much.

**Author's Note:**

> u can find me @morosexual-aziraphale on tumblr! don't forget to leave kudos and comments!


End file.
